It has been known in the past to provide barriers for closing the access opening to a fireplace. These barriers have taken various forms, including wire screens, glass partitions, and solid fire resistant materials such as metal or asbestos sheets. Because of the rather wide expanse of the access opening to the fire enclosure, each barrier must be of substantial size, and hence becomes somewhat unwieldy when it must be removed during access or stored when not in use. Various expedients are known to cope with this problem. Units have been constructed which are completely portable and include an integral stand for placement on the hearth in front of the access opening, the units being free standing and independent of attachment to the fireplace itself. Design of such units incurs problems of compromising the need for avoiding excessive weight and bulk with the need for a stable structure.
The stability problem has encouraged the design of hinged or sliding units attached to the fireplace itself as seen in Goudy U.S. Pat. No. 3,372,689. However such units necessarily have occupied undesireably large amounts of space adjacent to the access opening when in the open position, and are considered by many to be unsightly in that they obscure the brick of the fireplace adjacent to the fire enclosure access opening when in open position.
In order to minimize the aforesaid unsightliness and space requirements, it has been proposed in Williamson U.S. Pat. No. 169,876 to provide a compartment on either side of the access opening, and to construct the door so as to be foldable so that it is sufficiently compact so as to fit within the confines of the compartment. The compartment of course, is necessarily of limited size because of the space available and the constraints of unsightliness mentioned above.
The prior art also includes fireplaces with compartments for other purposes, such as cooking or warming foods. As examplified by Wetzel U.S. Pat. No. 1,451,246 these compartments are of such size as to preclude their incorporation in normally constructed fireplaces, or, as in Marsh U.S. Pat. No. 413,350 are not accessible from the front of the fireplace, again precluding incorporation in a preexisting conventional fireplace design.